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Copyright © 2010 by Thomas W. Shepherd, D. Min. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from Unity House, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews or in newsletters and lesson plans of licensed Unity teachers and ministers. For information, address Unity House, 1901 NW Blue Parkway, Unity Village, MO 64065-0001.

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Bible quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise indicated.

Teacher, minister, friend—who told me I was one with God, and demonstrated by his life how natural it is to find the Imago Dei in everyone.

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant, … enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”—Matthew 25:21 (KJV)

Foreword

Who Was Jesus?

Even his own publicists had different opinions of who Jesus of Nazareth was. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew came to the conclusion that he was indeed the Messiah of Israel, yet never quite explained what Messiah really meant. Was Jesus to be identified with the Cosmic Christ of the Gospel According to John, or the Suffering Son of God according to the writer of Mark? Or was he perhaps driven by the social agenda suggested by the Gospel of Luke?

Do we even know if the question “Who was Jesus?” would have made any sense to the writers of the Christian Scriptures? No wonder that so many people, in the 2,000 years since he walked the earth, have held differing opinions about him. For some people through the ages, Jesus was, and still is, in the words of the Nicene Creed,

… the Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.¹

Others found this “One Solitary Life”² reflected what they wished their God to be. In 1740, Charles Wesley penned the song “Jesus Lover of My Soul” and the next year Handel’s Messiah took the words from the Hebrew Bible and attributed to Jesus Wonderful, Counselor, Prince of Peace.³ For multitudes of people—from the time of the writing of the Gospels to today—Jesus of Nazareth has become the Christ, a process that has been many things to many people. To some, Jesus has been a source of comfort, to others a Savior, and to still others the Way Shower, and many more things than any one can imagine. Throughout history countless people from a wide variety of theological perspectives have been able to say with deep conviction, “He walks with me.”

In this collection of Christological essays, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Shepherd, my friend and Unity Institute colleague, has suggested there must be an evolutionary component in any understanding of the Man of Nazareth. I am hopeful that Shepherd’s efforts to place Christology in an evolutionary context will help individuals to see that any understanding of the man Jesus—who revealed God so completely that he continues to be called the Christ—must continue to evolve. This work can also help people understand that, while believers continue to attribute to Jesus an amazing array of titles, it is terribly important for progressive thinkers to understand the most important term of all. Shepherd contends that the Christ, as applied to the historical Jesus, applies equally to all humanity today.

If Jesus walks with me, I can be more tolerant of others, whether they feel his presence or not. If everyone is made in the Imago Dei, all have the same Christ-within, even while treading divergent paths and walking hand-in-hand with a different Christ.

Preface

Caveat Lector

This book presents one theologian’s point of view at this slice of the timeline. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily the final word on Christology for the author, let alone any organized religious institution, denomination or school of theology. Expect many good questions and very few eternal answers.

Some Acknowledgements

I owe the impetus for writing this volume to the Rev. Dr. Mary Tumpkin, president of the Universal Foundation for Better Living (UFBL). For about 15 months I worked as assistant executive director of that organization, which was founded by the charismatic leader Rev. Dr. Johnnie Colemon. When Dr. Tumpkin asked me to work on a volume about Christology, little did I imagine the task would stretch over 10 years and become one of the central studies of my professional life. I began researching this book while working as a denominational official for the UFBL in the summer of 2000, continued the project after accepting the pastorate of Sunrise Unity Church, Sacramento, California, and finally completed the work in the spring of 2010, while serving in my current position as chair of the Historical and Theological Studies department at Unity Institute, Unity Village, Missouri.

I want to thank my lovely wife, Carol-Jean, for diligently scrubbing the manuscript, checking biblical quotes (I’d messed up a few), and generally elbowing me in the eye when I got too verbose or pedantic. I also want to acknowledge the work of my Unity Institute colleague, Rev. Evelyn J. Niles, who read the final draft and made several critical suggestions that have been incorporated in the present volume. In fact, I would be remiss if I did not thank all my present and former teachers, fellow students, colleagues and co-workers at Lancaster School of Theology, Iliff School of Theology, Saint Paul School of Theology, Unity Institute, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Universal Foundation for Better Living, the Unity School of Christianity, and Unity Worldwide Ministries (formerly the Association of Unity Churches International). While all of the above helped to make this book possible, let me formally absolve them of any culpability in its sometimes heretical conclusions.

Let me add a personal testimonial. Although this book deconstructs—i.e., takes a solid whack at—more than a few human concepts of Jesus handed down through history, throughout my life I have never ceased to be a Jesus person. Even while attempting to topple the culturally biased, often bigoted, images by which some of his friends have tried to characterize the man behind the myth, Jesus has always been special to me. It is from this position of reverence, love and respect that the book you are about to read proceeds.

Finally, let me reiterate what I have said about all my work: this book does not represent the official theology of any organization, publishing house, church body or theological institution. This is one theologian’s musing about the most important figure in Western history. You are invited to join the ongoing Christological discussion. This is a book about a work in progress, i.e., remaking and reprogramming the ancient images for the world in which you live. Therefore, I cordially invite you to begin downloading this Jesus 2.1 upgrade, realizing you may have to rewrite the program to fit the unique circumstances of your life, where God is doubtless working through your consciousness to bring forth the highest, greatest good.

Introduction

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.¹

—Harry Emerson Fosdick,

The Living of These Days

Why add to the towering pile of books about Jesus of Nazareth? One might reasonably argue that too much has already been written about him. What possible good can another volume of Jesus-talk do in today’s postmodern, post-9/11, post-Christian world? Surely all the great ideas about the man from Galilee have already fought their way into print. What fair wind of change could another discourse on Christology—by yet another self-appointed theologian—add to the hurricane of words blowing through Christendom for the past 2,000 years?² People have continued to eat, drink, marry and give in marriage, and they have muddled through quite nicely without the current volume to guide them. Isn’t it obvious that, while making their lives and raising their families, people have successfully managed to make and remake Jesus Christ based on the needs of each successive era?

Yet it is just that observation—the successive remaking of Jesus, vertically through history and horizontally through contemporary cultures—which distinguishes this book from other works of Christology. Jesus 2.1: An Upgrade for the 21st Century takes seriously the creative process by which people have shaped their Jesuses. In fact, I will argue that creative interaction with inherited images and ideas about Jesus constitutes a healthy, positive course of intellectual and spiritual growth, an essential component in any understanding of Jesus Christ and the faith bearing his name.

There is nothing particularly innovative about the observation that thought-pictures of Jesus have been repainted through time. Authors like Albert Schweitzer and Jaroslav Pelikan have detailed the history of Christological metamorphosis. Schweitzer said the process was unavoidable; Christology must be progressive.

Each successive epoch found its own thoughts in Jesus, which was, indeed, the only way in which it could make him live … one created him in accordance with one’s own character.³

Rather than lament the lack of a clear-cut, authentic, historical Jesus from whom to receive perfect guidance, this volume celebrates the ongoing process of Jesus-building, choosing instead to see the culturally influenced images of the Christ as an attempt to get a better look at the Imago Dei, the image of God inscribed within each individual. The central point this book attempts to make is that the flexibility of a progressive Christology allows each new generation to discover more about their true nature by discovering themselves in Jesus the Christ.

Furthermore, the discussion proceeds from a postmodern premise, i.e., not only are there multiple paths to the same truth, but also multiple truths accessible along a dizzying diversity of paths. Not just the blind men and a lone elephant; other creatures, great and small, stand unidentified in the fuzzy dawn of a new, quantum universe. Reputable scientists now suspect that human thought has the power to shape reality in a way that probably would have scared Sir Isaac Newton out of his powdered wig.

Taking the multiplicity of truth as a given, the long history of Christological interpretation and reinterpretation becomes much easier to understand. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the great preachers of the 20th century, advocated openness to new thoughts as a survival tactic for any religious system.

If the day ever comes when men care so little for the basic Christian experiences and revelations of truth that they cease trying to rethink them in more adequate terms, see them in the light of freshly acquired knowledge, and interpret them anew for new days, then Christianity will be finished.⁴

To be fair to Fosdick’s vision, he was a modernist, not a postmodernist, in that he believed there was only one truth and the goal was to refine one’s thinking to grow ever closer to this singular view of reality. He also lived in a time before women rightly raised awareness about the need for inclusive language when speaking of humanity at large. Postmodernists, as mentioned above, postulate an amazing array of “truths” that individuals can comprehend, none of which may be singularly correct for all persons at all times. It is precisely this kind of open-ended discussion that can inform the search for new understandings of Jesus Christ for today and into the future.

Humanity has consistently and creatively recreated the son of Joseph and Mary to meet the needs of each new age. Most recent books written about the changing images of Jesus through time have attempted to recover the original person buried under all the modifications. Some have felt the historical Jesus enjoys special authority, or at the very least a unique and authoritative voice. Consequently, the closer we come to what he actually said and did, the closer we move to The Truth. This book sets off in a different direction. Acknowledging that people remake Jesus in each generation, I will argue, as Schweitzer did, that without a progressive Christology, the richness of the Jesus Event will be frozen in time, trivialized and ultimately lost. As Schweitzer also noted, it is probably impossible to reconstruct the historical Jesus from the documentary evidence, the best of which comes from biased sources who were not themselves eyewitnesses.

Now you have a thumbnail sketch of the book’s central thesis, but this work is less a systematic argument than a collection of ideas. Essentially, the current work is a series of essays to introduce a new application of an old, old story—a Jesus Christ upgraded for the 21st century. In the following chapters, you will participate in the celebration of a Jesus for now, taking for granted that all Jesuses for the future and all historical Jesuses from the past are, and should be, products of different needs.

Toggling the Image of God

To continue playing with the computer metaphor, let’s imagine that the Jesus 2.1 upgrade will reinstall the Jesus Christ operating system and quarantine any lingering remnants of culturally induced viruses that may have contaminated earlier versions (e.g., Jesus as the blonde European crusader with a penchant for burning witches), then install a revised Imago Dei, which some users have cross-referenced with the eternal Christ. Once installed in your thinking, Jesus 2.1 should make it easier to toggle the image of God among all sentient beings. This internal-eternal Christ can be discovered in the historical-biblical Jesus, but all interaction with Jesus comes through dialogue with models that have been shaped and reshaped through time and can be accessed through historical-critical study, some of which is included in the bundled Jesus 2.1 software.

Jesus is arguably both a point of reference and a meeting place for discussion of values, like a program that has been adapted through the ages while the basic code remains undisturbed despite all subsequent modifications. Now it is our time to rewrite and reinstall the Jesus program with updates for today, just as every previous generation has done and every subsequent generation will do.

The Romans killed Jesus for being a revolutionary. Every succeeding generation kills him anew by losing sight of the ongoing revolution in human consciousness that he represents. The idea is both simple and sublime—God within humanity, Imago Dei, becomes flesh and dwells among us, and everything we have said about this long-dead Galilean can be said about every human being who evolved on this glorious, violent, beautiful little planet.

The Kingdom of God will never come from the skies with fire and judgment, but perhaps we can build a democratic model of God’s Commonwealth instead. Starting with the ongoing task of finding new ways to love each other, we can work to end war and poverty, bring health and prosperity to everyone, and go forward to the stars as one people united. Then we shall see what other mysteries have been revealed in the cosmos by the outpicturing divine creativity as the sacred process of life continues.

Jesus calls people to follow him because he knows where the path leads. When and if the call reaches ready minds and hearts, like the fishermen long ago, people silently leave their nets of complacency and begin the journey anew.

- 1 -

First Thoughts

Theological reflection is a subversive activity; it makes people uncomfortable; it will make you uncomfortable. This is to be expected; the discomfort is a sign that you are breaking chains that bind you, that you are investigating new lands, that you are taking greater control over your life. It is your opportunity to distinguish the God who has called you from all other gods (and there are many!) and, like Joshua, commit yourself and your congregants to serving and worship the One God.¹

—Rev. Dr. Robert Martin

New Heavens, Many Earths, New Hermeneutic

We live in an age when, almost daily, astronomers are discovering extrasolar planets that orbit nearby stars. This cornucopia of new worlds suggests the tantalizing, wildly optimistic possibility of a Star Trek future when it might be commonplace for humans to fly to earth-type alien worlds on the wings of technologies yet unborn.

Here on earth more readily achievable biotech advances offer the alluring possibilities of an end to disease, vastly increased human intelligence and stamina, and even physical immortality—or at least Methuselan longevity. Yet the spoiling specters of environmental disaster and rampant global terrorism haunt the sacred paths of science. Science alone is not a guarantor of a benevolent future world. Historians and theologians have noted that fascist Germany sprouted from a highly educated, sophisticated society; Hitler coldly adjusted that skill base to his own nefarious devices. The brain trust employed by the Nazis fervently researched the sciences, invented modern rocketry, and produced detailed biotech plans to improve its “racial stock” through eugenics and euthanasia. Germanic Christianity—incontestably the lighthouse of Protestant thought in the early 20th century—could not guide its people through the dark sea of fascism, nor could its great theological and ethical lights prevent the massive cultural shipwreck of the Holocaust.

In a contemporary milieu fraught with tendencies toward sadism and self-destruction, yet offering the potential for unbounded opportunities, perhaps an enhanced understanding of Christology is more important than ever. The model of humanity presented in that “one solitary life” arguably has the potential to counterbalance all the Hitlers and Stalins humanity ever produced.² Jesus Christ is such an influential figure in human history that a new vision of who he was, how he has changed through time, and what he continues to be in human consciousness might be indispensable for a postmodern, high-tech, galaxy-facing culture.

“Take me to your Savior …”

If a team of visiting scholars from another solar system decided to look into the central figure in Christianity, they would quickly discover a baffling array of Jesuses offered by an equally bewildering marketplace of “Christian” groups. Digging into the piles of Jesus profiles, they might conclude there is no central organizing principle that unites the disparate Jesus images. Christian loyalties notwithstanding, we must allow that the alien researchers would have a point. Place the suffering, redeeming Jesus of Roman Catholicism beside the sin-busting Jesus of American fundamentalism; invite into the circle the mystical Jesus of Quaker spirituality, the status-quo-shaking Jesus of feminist theology, and the patriotic-triumphant Jesus of Mormonism. Call a suburban Protestant Jesus to the group, then add the provocative Jesus of New Testament scholarship and the prophetic Jesus of black liberation theology. For good measure, drop a Muslim Jesus into the mix (he’s an Islamic prophet, you know). The visiting off-worlders might glance at each other and mumble, “This is not the same specimen of Homo sapiens.”

But of course he is. There was only one historic Jesus. The problem is that Jesus models have never coincided, not even during his earthly ministry. The inherited biblical Jesuses are inconsistent to the point of contradiction. Mark’s Jesus is too human, John’s too divine. This confusion is one of many reasons why people seldom go to the Bible to get religious ideas; people are more likely to read the Bible with religious ideas already decided. Wearing the lenses of their embedded theologies, people look to the Scripture for validation and emotional support. Roman Catholics who read the Bible will not encounter the same Jesus as Mormons or Quakers. It could scarcely be otherwise.

Although common sense suggests human thought starts somewhere, the indisputable fact is that all ideas are shaped by what has happened to us in the past. Even the most objective scholar begins by putting on a lens that induces her to conclude, “Objective thinking works best here …” Human belief systems hardly function by pure logic based on total objectivity; in fact there is no vantage point from which we can look down upon life and arrive at an unbiased opinion. We approach all decisions with a set of preferences we did not specifically choose yet are operational nonetheless. To examine the nature of embedded beliefs, I need only remind myself that if complete impartiality were possible, everyone reading this book would root for the Philadelphia Phillies and prefer onion bagels to wheat toast, just like me.

Even while acknowledging to the panel of scholarly aliens that we are unable to divest ourselves completely of embedded assumptions about Jesus, we must also confess that the Man of Nazareth is irreplaceable in human consciousness. Whether looking at 21st-century life in terms of science or spirituality, politics or philosophy, economics or ethics, mental health or matters of the heart, Jesus continues to play an essential role in the collective consciousness of Western civilization.

Even those who grew up in Christian lands only to reject Jesus utterly, often for good reasons, have usually rejected Jesus because of values inherited from Jesus. For example, those who renounce Jesus because they find the “One Way” language of American fundamentalism intolerant and mean-spirited have unconsciously affirmed the tolerance and inclusive spirit that the biblical Jesus showed to all people, even the hated Romans. It usually isn’t Jesus who turns people off—it’s some of his small-minded friends.

Jesus is too important to dismiss due to the overzealous proclamations of his self-appointed spokespersons. Because of the continued importance of Europe and the Americas in world political, cultural and economic spheres, some degree of Christological reflection is important for humanity at large, whether Christian or not. The same could be said of Muhammad, whose 1.5 billion adherents form the second largest religious family on earth. In fact, I would argue that college students everywhere could profit from a reasonably objective, self-consciously unbiased, nondogmatic study of the world religions, including the foundational prophets and foremost thinkers of each major faith. My students in world religions at Unity Institute have insisted that the best part of the course was hearing from guest speakers who represented groups we had studied, which provided opportunity for Q&A and widened our outlook of a faith community previously represented by text and lecture alone.

Studying the Jesus Event today requires a fresh perspective, because most people have heard too much about Jesus to know anything about him. The older Jesus program was installed on the hard drives of modern minds through childhood religious education and perpetuated by a conservative Christian media that refuses to let humanity come of age. However, unlike my guest speakers from world religions, it is not possible to invite the historic Jesus to speak today as a corrective measure to this earlier programming. Meditatively, perhaps, one can have a one-to-one with Jesus that could be quite informative. But unless one’s operating system is updated with new input, the chances are that any Jesus encountered through meditative experiences will sound remarkably like the “greatest hits” of the older Jesus model.

What is possible is to re-examine the recorded memories and interpretative history standing behind the Jesus programs already running in human minds, then download an update based on insights from postmodern biblical studies and theology. New clarity can be achieved after reconfiguring thought by rebooting it through a new application of Christology. As this process begins, the older version will be easily recognized as obsolete, unable to interface with the circumstances of postmodern life. It does not require a full diagnostic sweep of the Christian faith to recognize that humanity needs an updated Jesus program.

Consequently, this book will attempt to provide that kind of biblical-theological update, offering new input by which people can reinstall and restart their faith in the greatest life ever lived. Representing more than 10 years’ work, the book is an attempt to pull together some of my theological reflections, essays, ruminations and stray thoughts on the most-written-about and least-agreed-upon figure in world history. Certainly, Jesus Christ needs no introduction. He is the ultimate incumbent, holding office for 2,000 years in Western consciousness.

Yet despite how all people feel about Jesus, very little is actually known about him historically, and the scant historical information has only recently begun to be discussed in language that can be understood by nonprofessionals. Books by scholars like Karen Armstrong, Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Bart Ehrman, Robert W. Funk, John Shelby Spong and others have begun to bridge the divide between theological scholarship and popular awareness, but there is still much work to be done. Historian and biblical scholar Elaine Pagels writes:

What I’ve learned through studying the Gospel of Thomas and the context of the politics of early Christianity is that anyone who participates in Christian tradition without having learned anything about it—and that’s most people who participate in it, because it’s not taught in public or private schools for the most part—often think of their traditions as immutable, as if they’ve just come down from God.³

Although not everyone realizes it, a host of delightful, ongoing controversies present themselves in Christian thought, idea-rich disagreements that provide various ways to look at Jesus the Christ. This volume attempts to chart some of the most delicious disputes, and in so doing encourage readers to rethink, reshape and reinvent the Jesus paradigm for today. Plato said that an unexamined life is not worth living, and one could easily convert that old maxim into a Christological formulation: No matter how passionately a believer loves him, an unexamined Christology is not worthy of Jesus.

Because of this strangely uninformed familiarity about Jesus Christ, it will be necessary to offer a few words of introduction about the most-discussed life ever lived. The discussion begins with two hidden assumptions about Christology.

Two Hidden Assumptions

Dr. Karl Barth was one of the most brilliant and complex intellectuals of the twentieth century. He wrote volume after massive volume on the meaning of life and faith. A reporter once asked Dr. Barth if he could summarize what he had said in all those volumes. Dr. Barth thought for a moment and then said: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”⁴

Neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth was known for his sophisticated ideas, yet this German-speaking professor chose a children’s hymn to express the deepest sentiments of his thought. The uncomplicated language of this Sunday school song masks a deep well of meaning. Its plain verse inadvertently describes a complexity beyond any straightforward identification with Divine compassion, otherwise Barth never would have chosen it as an example of his system. “Jesus loves me” can be seen as a confident assertion of a one-on-one relationship with the Supreme Power in the Universe, a source of identity that describes the circle of faith. Likely it is this sense that Barth wanted to invoke by choosing the hymn.

Despite the clean lines of thought behind Barth’s musical selection to illustrate his theology, clarity and objectivity in looking at Jesus are often difficult to achieve. For example, notwithstanding its simplicity and apparent inclusiveness, there is a narrower way to interpret the “Jesus Loves Me” lyrics. Two hidden assumptions, embedded within the belief systems of many Christians today, can be distilled from the lovely words that generations of believers have learned to sing as children.

1) Jesus is on my side (“Jesus loves me, this I know”)

Unfortunately, some followers of Jesus are so heavily invested in the authority of the man from Galilee that they feel an almost frantic need for vindication through his words and deeds, so that the affection they believe Jesus bears for them—and they reciprocate for him—somehow legitimizes their belief systems.

If Jesus loves me, surely he stands with me. If Jesus stands with me, his footprints in my camp validate my belief system and my moral and political values. The approval of Jesus means I hold the proper Christian position on public health care policy, taxation, abortion, gay rights and gun control. If Jesus stands on the other side of any of these issues—well, he simply can’t stand on the other side, because he is always right. And since I am on the right side, Jesus must be here too.

A full-blown hermeneutical system—i.e., a network of interpretative principles that inform biblical analysis—can be derived from a hidden assumption that Jesus must be on my side (“Jesus loves me, this I know”). Such a hermeneutic draws energy from the strong need to agree with Jesus, or better still to have Jesus agree with me. Its belief formula looks like this:

2) The Bible is literally true (“For the Bible tells me so”)

The conclusion that God is on my side requires believers to nourish a second hidden assumption, i.e., the Bible is a coherent, harmonious document that supports my belief system (“For the Bible tells me so”). To follow such a naive, unbiblical prescription requires reinterpretation of problem passages until the offending texts conform to one’s ethics and theology. Any hint of discord, any disturbing instance where Jesus does something that is less than admirable—cursing a fig tree not in season or promising to send violent judgment rather than peace upon the earth—forces true believers to rescue the text with creative interpretation to assuage their cognitive dissonance. For literalists who hold that Jesus is perfect, infallible and uniquely divine, the best which can be hoped for is blissful ignorance of this dynamic at work, because willfully deconstructing the authority of Jesus would pull the theological foundation from underfoot and rip the ceiling off the universe of biblical literalism.

Karl Barth never would have gone there. He was too faithful to Jesus to let biblical inerrancy be the sine qua non of Christian faith.⁵

Cafeteria Christianity: “Pick and Choose”

This assumption of total harmony is not restricted to evangelicals; progressives and even flat-out liberals often rush to the Scripture to validate their ethical and theological positions. Some Christian thinkers seem to cringe at the notion of interpretative authority resting solely within the individual interpreter. When we lived in Georgia, we sometimes attended worship services conducted by a now-retired mainline clergyman, a deeply spiritual gentleman whom I greatly admired. Although he was an outstanding preacher and pastor, he nevertheless considered the tendency to “pick and choose” among biblical ideas to be a shocking rejection of biblical faith. A popular term for this is Cafeteria Christianity, a derogatory label for Christians who

… pick and choose what doctrines they want to follow and what doctrines they want to ignore. … They believe that they do not have to follow the rules of anyone. They are in charge and they can believe what they want.⁶

Whenever I have heard this argument, I’ve found myself muttering, “Of course people pick and choose!” Christianity is definitely a cafeteria, not a hot dog stand. The faith of Jesus is a smorgasbord of possibilities, better still, it’s a supermarket where the believer can select from a wide variety of spiritual foods, take them home, and cook up endlessly different, deliciously individualized servings of spiritual sustenance. A Christian faith with many choices is not only possible; it is demanded by faith and reason. Everyone picks and chooses, and not only in their religious thinking. Whether reading the newspaper or pouring over Scripture, voting for a political candidate or exploring religious faith, people exercise their God-given power of judgment to select wholesome spiritual fare.

Sometimes I think the argument against so-called Cafeteria Christianity sounds like parents fretting after they have shouted to misbehaving children, “Because I said so!” Yes, there are times when adults have to look a kid in the eye and say, “Nice try. Now, eat your vegetables, clear the table, and put your coat on, it’s freezing outside.” Most children eventually grow up and learn which of their parents’ eternal verities have any staying power in the next generation.

My unscientific suspicion is that many self-described Christians handle conflicts between problematic biblical texts and everyday reality by selectively perceiving those ideas that work for them and setting up firewalls within the canon of Scripture to protect themselves from cognitive dissonance. These artificial walls nevertheless shape the individual’s cosmos and provide a frame of reference by which everything is evaluated. Yet there is a better way, which keeps the psyche undivided and the believer grounded in life’s experiences.

Truth Self-Validates

Rather than assuming Jesus is a perfect, infallible source of divine revelation and the Bible speaks with one voice, this book accepts another formula, one that is followed by most biblical scholars today. The “new” approach? Simply this: Let the Bible be what it is, ancient spiritual literature written by human beings. This alternative point of view is hardly a radical innovation for 21st-century readers, although it differs profoundly from the earlier, revelation-based hermeneutic, which relied upon external authority. Truth validates itself by demonstrating its value rather than demanding a religious pledge of allegiance.

Pushing beyond theories of supernatural revelation, it becomes clear that the whole bundle of ideas, traditions and practices which comprise the Christian faith is a valiant, human attempt the carry divine truth in earthen vessels. Instead of bricking Jesus and the Second Testament authors into a temple of biblical perfection, let’s consider the possibility that, although Jesus and the early Christian communities put forth an amazing array of great teachings, some of their ideas will not work today. Taking the discussion even further and crossing into what seems like new territory for Christian thought, let’s step over the imaginary line that borders the sacred and secular worlds and propose that Jesus of Nazareth, like any great teacher, has no special authority whatsoever except when he says something that connects with the listener.

This requires postmodern thinking, which is not always a painless adjustment. Certainty is comfortable. Even if we dismiss a literal inerrancy of the biblical texts, shall we take the next step and question the authority of Jesus himself? Retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong remarks that the old idea of biblical authority dies hard:

To face this reality is essential to my integrity as a Christian, but it is not easy. My religious critics say to me that there can be no Christianity apart from the authority of the scriptures. They hear my attack on this way of viewing the Bible as an attack on Christianity itself. I want to say in response that the claim that the scriptures are either divinely inspired or are the “Word of God” in any literal sense has been so destructive that I no longer want to be part of that kind of Christianity.⁷

Certainly, when people interact with the biblical sources they can learn and grow, but arguably neither the authority of Jesus nor the infallibility of the Bible is what stimulates growth. Women and men grow spiritually when seeds planted in their consciousness take root, expand, bloom and eventually produce what the apostle Paul called “fruit of the spirit.”⁸ In line with the above, let’s consider a simplified hermeneutical statement that meets the tests of postmodern life:

Daunting Task

Jesus Christ through the centuries has been an extraordinarily fertile source of spiritual nourishment. Jesus has been studied, sermonized about, meditated upon, prayed to, worshiped and admired daily for 2,000 years. Yet his very familiarity makes it a daunting task to approach the Nazarene from any new direction. Like being raised with a kid brother, we know him too well to know anything about him. The charming childhood ditty that proclaims, “Yes, Jesus loves me,” doesn’t guarantee I am thinking clearly about Jesus. Or that Jesus and I always agree.

A balanced, prudent view of Jesus acknowledges that the historical Jesus is unavailable today except through the filters and lenses of Scripture, tradition, experience and reflection, and the product of this process comes with an expiration date stamped on the bottom. Jesus in the beginning decades of the 21st century is not likely to remain the same figure at the turn of the 22nd when our descendents reconstruct him. Both the historical Jesus and the manufactured, reinterpreted theological Jesus still have the power to speak meaningfully to humanity through the haze of changing times and cultures.

The “Christ of Faith”

If most Americans were shown a 30-something Caucasian man wearing a white robe, shoulder-length hair and close-cropped beard, chances are the identity-center of their brains would automatically chirp, “Yeah, I know that guy.” Chances are the answer wouldn’t be, “That’s John Lennon!” The fair-skinned, robed image immediately conjures up memories of stained glass portraits and full-color prints of childhood, despite the fact that the Nazarene probably looked less like a Norse Viking and more like a Bedouin Arab. So why is this instant recognition software installed in almost everybody’s brain? Because they know him.

Notwithstanding his long-ago lifetime and lofty location in literature and liturgy, Jesus for many people is not some distant deity, enthroned in Olympian splendor. Men and women today feel intimately acquainted with Jesus. People you and I have met and known personally insist that they have met and known Jesus, personally. People swear he has changed their lives, made them better human beings. Not only that, he continues to do so. He walks with them and talks with them—not in the distant past, but now, in the 21st century. Although no one alive today has stood face-to-face with the historic figure whose memory glows amid the shadows of antiquity, many people alive today really, really love Jesus in an intimate and personal way, like a loved one gone to war—distant, yet present in living memory, preserved by reread letters and daily conversations.

Removing or at least refocusing devotional lenses, the picture gets both clearer and more complicated. Some religious scholars argue that most Jesus concepts which have come down to us are actually based on a Christ of faith, a customized icon of Christian devotion, created and recreated in successive generations to meet the needs of the era.⁹

1	First Thoughts
2	An Ordinary Man Who Changed the World
3	Jesus 2.1—Interactive, Postmodern Paradigm
4	Dream a Little Dream With Me
5	Practical Christianity, Metaphysics and Theology
6	Jesus and the Christ: The New Paradigm
7	The Vantage Point of History
8	The Apostles
9	The Self-Appointed Apostle Paul
10	Crash Course in Christological Controversies
11	Jesus Christ for Today
12	Six Reasons to Follow Jesus
13	Jesus Christ and Self-Esteem
14	Jesus Christ and Relationships

Contents